Genetic diversity among five T4-like bacteriophages

Table 1 Summary of T4-like genome sequences determined in comparison with T4

Genome	Size (%GC)	# ORFS (% of genome)	# tRNAs	# T4-like ORFs (% of all)	#novel ORFs
T4	168,904 (35.0%)	273 (95.9%)	8	209 (76.6%)	64
RB69	167,560 (37.6%)	273 (94.0%)	2	208 (77.7%)	65
RB49	164,018 (40.5%)	272 (94.5%)	0	121 (44.5%)	151
Aeh1	233,234 (42.8%)	332 (91.6%)	24	104 (31.3%)	228
RB43	180,500 (43.2%)	292 (94.2%)	1	114 (39.0%)	178
44RR 2.8t	173591 (44.0%)	253 (92.8%)	16	116 (45.8%)	137

The number of ORFs for T4 is from the GenBank accession but does not include 7 alternative translation products included within some ORFs. The number of ORFs predicted for T4 by GeneMarkS was 266 (93.1% of the genome length). tRNAs were predicted by tRNAscan-SE. The number of T4-like ORFs is the number of ORFs conserved in T4 and at least one of the other genomes studied. The remainder of ORFs in each genome are novel ORFs.

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